


Set Up

by plutosrose



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020 [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Family Dinners, M/M, Matchmaking, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27898459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: “Her daughter Margaret is really nice. She’s studying to be a secretary. She thinks you two would get along well.”“Ma, I don’t want to have this discussion again,” Bucky grumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face.-Bucky's already happy.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882291
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Set Up

Bucky had promised, after he’d moved out of the house and into a tiny apartment with Steve, that he’d be around for dinner every Saturday. Steve was always invited too--he suspected that since Sarah had passed away, his parents were trying to make up for the years they’d spent telling him that Steve was a bad influence on him after the nuns had informed them that there had been yet another fight (of Steve’s, always of Steve’s) in the schoolyard that he’d broken up with his fists. 

Steve came too, most of the time. He was always bouncing between jobs in their neighborhood--he’d get one, then inevitably get sick, and when he was better, be asked not to come back. He was always apoplectic whenever that happened (though this was Steve, and he was pretty sure sometimes that anger was the only thing keeping him alive through so many bouts of debilitating illness), but it made him work harder whenever he got a new job, even if it meant skipping dinner at the Barnes’s.

This week, however, Steve, who had just lost his job at Mr. McGreery’s newsstand, was at home in their kitchen, sketching something onto a piece of paper.

He paused for a moment and looked down--it was always interesting to see Steve work, make something out of nothing. It was too early to tell what it was--flowing lines and dark shadows (or maybe Steve was just frustrated, it was hard to tell sometimes if certain things in his work were a purely artistic choice). When Steve was this absorbed in his work too, he tended not to notice anything around him. It was the one time he seemed more or less at peace.

He hummed to himself and gave Steve’s shoulder a squeeze. 

“Going to dinner. I’ll bring you back something if I can.” 

Steve looked up at him for a moment, and for the first time in a few days, Bucky saw him smile. “Thanks for thinking of me, but Janey and Lily still live at home, and they should--”

Bucky waved him off. “Then I’ll save you half of mine.” 

Steve furrowed his brow, like he was about to mount an argument about how Bucky needed food more than he did (which was something that he’d tried, repeatedly). But Bucky knew now that the best way to shut down that argument was to leave the conversation as soon as possible, before Steve found the words to explain why he felt Bucky was more useful, more deserving. 

He simply patted him on the shoulder again and said, “I’ll give Ma your best.” 

-  
He bought a bouquet of daisies at the little flower stall two blocks from his parents’ house--he’d tried to bring bread from the bakery a block away from the apartment he shared with Steve, and had gotten a talking to from both of his parents about how if he was buying food he should keep it for himself. After that, he settled on flowers to bring. The last thing he wanted to do was show up empty-handed, and he knew that since the market had crashed in ‘29, his mother had been steadily selling off her jewelry, and had moved to other things like her scarves and her nice dresses--she wouldn’t say so, but having small luxuries like flowers made her happy. 

He found his mother in the kitchen, chopping vegetables that were close to wilting and stirring a pot on the stove. She looked up from her work for a few seconds as Bucky came over to give her a kiss. “Your father’s out back in the yard if you want to go say hi.” 

“Where are Janey and Lily?” he asked as he set the daisies in a vase in the middle of the table and pulled out a chair. 

“They went to see a movie at the Roxy with a couple of friends from school.” 

Bucky raised an eyebrow, briefly wondering where these friends had gotten the money to take his sisters to a show. Then again, the theater hadn’t been the same since the Roxyettes had left--Bucky remembered squirreling away a photo of the long-legged dancers to show Steve and promising that one day he’d take him to a show. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little. 

“How is Steve doing?” Winnie asked--Bucky leaned back in his chair. 

“Steve’s okay, he gives you his best.” 

A long silence followed, nothing but the scrape of the spoon against the pot to fill the air. “I talked to Mrs. Schuster last week at church,” Winnie began, stirring the pot on the stove. Bucky was already clenching his jaw--nothing good usually came out of Winnie’s discussions with her church friends.

“Her daughter Margaret is really nice. She’s studying to be a secretary. She thinks you two would get along well.” 

“Ma, I don’t want to have this discussion again,” Bucky grumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

Winnie lifted the large wooden spoon from the pot of creamed chicken and waved it around, sending bits of cream and cubed vegetables against the stove. “Listen James Buchanan, I’m not going to be alive forever. I want to see you happily married. I want to see you have a family. Preferably before I go.”

Bucky was barely able to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. “Ma, you’re not that old.” 

Winnie drew her lips into a tight line, and it was hard for Bucky not to be amused by it--he made the exact same face when he was annoyed. “Sarah was here, and then she was gone. None of us know when our time is up and we will be called back to join the Lord.” 

His stomach twisted uncomfortably--barely a month had passed since the last time that Steve was ill. He remembered the way that Steve’s hair had clung to his brow with sweat. He’d barely been able to get him to drink the broth that he made for him. He hadn’t prayed in earnest in a long time, but that had gotten him to pray as hard as he could to God when he was sure that Steve was asleep. ‘Don’t take him,’ he remembered asking, ‘But if you have to, I don’t want him to suffer. He doesn’t deserve that.’ 

A few days later, Steve had been fine. Almost like he’d never been sick. 

Steve was the luckiest and unluckiest person he’d ever met.

“I don’t want you setting me up with daughters of your church friends, Ma,” Bucky shook his head, which made Winnie narrow her eyes at him. 

“They are perfectly nice girls, James. They’re not like those girls that you meet at those dance halls or wherever it is you go.” Winnie was aggressively stirring the pot now, in the way that she did whenever she was trying not to lose her temper. “You’re a grown man now, and you’re capable of making your own decisions. I just want to help.” 

Bucky got up from his chair and put his hand on Winnie’s shoulder. “I know.”

He didn’t have the words to explain to her that he didn’t need help--that he was, in fact, perfectly happy. He liked waking up to see that Steve was in the kitchen already, aggressively working on his latest project, brow furrowed in concentration. He liked going out to dance halls with Steve and watching him laugh and smile with the rare pretty girl that gave him a chance. 

“Things haven’t been good for Steve since Sarah died,” Bucky added, but that was only part of it. Steve might have struggled on his own, but Bucky knew that without Steve, he would have struggled too. 

Mentioning Sarah might have been a cheap shot, but at the very least, his mother understood the gravity of her loss. She paused her stirring for a moment and reached out to give him a hug. “I know. And everything you’ve done for that boy James--I am so proud of the man you’ve become.”

“But promise me that you will get married to a nice girl some day. Have a family, be happy,” she grabbed his hand and held it firmly.

Bucky nodded, “I promise.”

He lied.


End file.
